As we have reported on Nissan Insider this week, it has been announced that Qashqai was officially the UK’s favourite new car of 2022, and the first British-built model to top the annual sales charts for 24 years.
The iconic crossover is a genuine home-grown success story. After all, it was designed in Paddington, engineered in Cranfield and is built in Sunderland at Nissan’s record-breaking and phenomenally successful production plant.
But what makes Qashqai so special? What has propelled it to the top of the UK new car sales charts for 2022?
Design
Mat Weaver, Vice President of Design at Nissan’s design centre in Paddington, London, said: “With its compact footprint and higher driving position, the first-generation Qashqai broke the mould for how a mass-market vehicle should look and feel – it was a revolutionary ‘crossover’ design.
“It’s difficult to believe now that some industry observers were sceptical about Qashqai’s chances of success when it first arrived back in 2007. Yet, in 2023, crossovers are now the dominant car design trend with almost all manufacturers now featuring them in their line-up.
“It all started with our ground-breaking Qashqai – a British success story that’s assured of a place in the automotive history books.’’
Engineering
David Moss, Senior Vice President of Research & Development at Nissan Technical Centre in Cranfield, said: “The Qashqai has always had an incredibly challenging brief.
“To become a best-selling car, it has to excel in all areas from performance, practicality, reliability, design and technology.
“It also has to be great value for money, and have a distinct character that makes people proud to own and drive it.
“Our engineering teams in the UK have worked incredibly hard to develop the Qashqai to ensure it exceeds this brief and our reward is seeing it earn its place as a motoring icon at the heart of British life.”
Manufacturing
Alan Johnson, Vice President of Manufacturing for Nissan Motor Manufacturing (UK), added: “We’ve built three generations of the ground-breaking Qashqai in the north-east and it has become the mainstay of production here for 16 years.
“We’re incredibly proud of its success and it’s great to see that our passion for building it is shared by car buyers across the UK and Europe, who love its combination of practicality, exciting design, unique technology and electrified efficiency.”